Formalin.
Calmly the yellowish hand of the corpse reached out for the girl, holding a saucer with an empty cup on it. They were using simple white porcelain which Julia only deemed fitting. Pictures and funny shapes just seemed inappropriate somehow.
Hiding her subtle terror well, she poured tea from the pot into the cup. The corpse smiled at her with broken teeth. "Thank you, darling." It was not that bad. Julia was pretty sure that there was nothing to be afraid of. But sitting in a dissecting room with an army of corpses and having tea with one of them was just not the kind of thing that went easy on your nerves. Nevertheless she tried to smile back. It was a pathetic attempt albeit better than the last one, and the corpse didn’t seem to notice. Or it just didn’t mind. Smiles become rare when you’re dead. Maybe it was just happy for any kind.
Tentatively the dead woman sipped at the steaming tea. It was by far too hot but that didn’t bother her, and why would it. Her wrinkled fingers held the cup with expertise, displaying decades of practice. She had been old before she died. And the formalin only empowered that look. The entire body was covered in yellow wrinkles, carved by the years she’d been bathing in the death preserving soup. It was even shot through her vessels, meant to penetrate her completely. And it did. Just as it should it made death last.
Of course there were limits to even this radical method. A dead man’s eyes could not be preserved in that matter, they would turn a dull white and most certainly be destroyed in the process. The dead woman’s right eye was almost completely devastated, leaving a ragged view into her skull. Her other eye was pale and featureless. Julia wasn’t sure how the corpse could see at all. But the rules of death did not follow the guidelines of life. That much she had learned in the last few minutes.
With a mixture of professional interest and curious disgust Julia watched the arm that led the cup to the dead lips. Skin and connective tissue had been neatly removed to reveal perfectly prepared nerves and arteries, bones and sinews. She had done that herself, earlier today, together with her fellow students. That was before she had known that Elli was aware of what they were doing. Julia shuddered. They called her Elli. She didn’t even know the real name.
"Are you all right, my dear?" asked the corpse, its voice filled with concern. "You’re not going to faint, are you?"
"No." Julia took a deep breath, remembering a little too late that the air was satiated with formalin as well. It bit her lungs and left a sick taste in her mouth. You were supposed to get used to it. Some of the docs worked here every day. Good God. "Yes... I am ok, thank you. Thank you."
There was a smile on those yellow lips now. Julia hadn’t seen it appear, so she had to assume it had always been there. "This is very good tea," said the mouth. Julia wondered where the air to speak came from. Surely not from the pair of deflated lungs on the other end of the table. "It’s been quite a while since I had a good cup of tea." Judging from the wooden plaque that hang from her toe she had died six years ago.
"You’re welcome," Julia managed to say. She was at a loss with her manners. What kind of questions could be considered appropriate for a person who is respectively dead? "Can you... I mean... can you taste it at all?"
The dead woman chuckled. "Why, of course, silly. Why else would I want to drink it?"
"Ah."
A moment of uncomfortable silence stood in the room. Uncomfortable for the girl at least. The dead one didn’t seem to notice. In the silence Julia heard something trickle. She suspected what it would be but couldn’t make herself not look. Small drops of undigested tea ran down the lower abdomen. It had been cut open, most organs removed. There never was the necessity to sew it up again.
"Oh dear. I’m making quite a mess, am I not?"
"No!" Julia exclaimed quickly. "No, really. It’s ok."
"But I don’t want you to have to clean up after me." With her other hand the dead woman reached for a tissue. "People did that more than enough when I was still alive. Good grief, I was so terribly old and probably a nuisance to everyone. I was always so proud that I could take good care of myself..."
Near panic and somehow embarrassed, Julia now stood in front of the steel dissecting table the corpse was sitting on. She reached under the crimson shroud that was used to cover the specimens. It had the colour of a bad joke. "Here..." Hesitantly she put the piece of white cloth in the woman’s cavity. It stained immediately, sucking up the tea.
"There," said the corpse. "Thank you, dear."
"You’re welcome."
Blinking Julia sat back down on her small wooden stool and picked up her cup of tea. Until now she had drunk nothing of it. Swallowing was as far from her mind as biochemistry class. Not knowing what to say or do she picked up the plate beside her foot.
"A biscuit?"
"Ah no, thank you, my dear. You know, my teeth really aren’t the best these days. And my doctor told me it wasn’t good for my stomach."
Julia‘s gaze fled to the woman’s stomach that was lying on the other end of the dissecting table, together with the other organs. She finally felt the need for tea. It felt cold when it reached her stomach.
"But you could have one, girl. I see they are with chocolate. Must be delicious." The corpse winked. "And have one in my stead as well."
The girl swallowed. "I’d rather not right now."
Again that look of genuine concern. "Do you not feel well, my dear?"
No. She really didn’t. "Can I ask you something? Something personal?"
"But of course." Through those parched lips the voice sounded a bit like a split flute. "You only learn through asking. That’s what I always said. When I was young I used to make people crazy with my questions."
"Do we... hurt you? I mean what we’re doing. Does it hurt?"
The dead woman gave her a smile and wiped the thought away with her hand. In a distant medical corner of her mind, Julia hoped that the arteries wouldn’t get damaged. That would get her into a lot of trouble.
"Of course not. I don’t feel a thing. Don’t you worry. That’s one of the advantages of being dead."
Julia winced. It was the first time the woman referred to herself as dead.
"It only... itches occasionally. Not very often. Like when you were doing my feet?" The dead woman chuckled. "Might have just been my imagination though, you know how that is."
"That was... not quite what I meant." Gathering courage, the girl couldn’t help feeling ashamed. "The things we said. How we... treated you."
The corpse gave her a look that made Julia feel like a child. Like she was very young and foolish. She wished she hadn’t asked.
"Darling, do you really think I can mind these things? I am dead."
"But you still have feelings. In a way. The tea?"
"Well yes, of course I have feelings. You don’t get rid of them that easily. But it is understandable. This must be a rather gruesome situation for you students. I’m not sure I could have stomached all this cutting of dead bodies in my youth." For a moment the voice grew faint, and Julia thought there was a blubbering noise. "It was bad enough when they showed me my husband after his accident, God save his soul." Then the smile returned, having never left in the first place. "It is only natural that you have to find a way to deal with it. I don’t mind the jokes. Even if they are a little on the... well... let us say kinkier side. And also... look at me. I’m surely not the pretties sight, am I? So, don’t you worry. It is all well and good." She leaned back and took another sip of tea, humming slightly. "After all, it’s all for the best. So you can become good doctors. I knew that when I signed the form."
The cup slid over the saucer. It sounded fair enough. Although she didn’t understand it completely, Julia felt better now.
"Thank you," she said. "And you never regretted doing that?"
"What do you mean?"
"Handing yourself over to the institute. As a..."
The corpse nodded. "Specimen. No, I don’t. It is really all for the best. I don’t regret that." Her voice was serious. "There are enough other things to regret. Believe me."
Julia believed it. Her thoughts froze for a moment. Her, she thought. Her, not it.
"Are all the... others... here... are they all like you?" she asked.
The dead woman lifted her dry eyebrows. "Like me?"
"You know. Um."
"Oh, you mean talking? Drinking tea?"
"Yes."
She looked around, uninterested. The room was huge and covered with a dome of dirty glass. There were five sections, parted by milky glass walls, each one harbouring more than a dozen yellow corpses on steel tables with thick crimson shrouds on them. Only section five was lit, bright sterile light. Although it was in the middle of the night, Julia had feared that the dome illuminated would have surely raised suspicion. Right now most of the dead were lost in darkness and the room looked smaller than it was. Nothing moved except them.
Eventually the sitting dead said "I don’t know," and shrugged. The medical student looked at her. The shoulder muscles had been separated a while ago.
"The fat man over there, excuse the expression, sometimes seems like he’s twitching."
Julia looked over her shoulder at the far off table where twelve other students had been busy scratching off fatty tissue for over three days. They had been pissed to no end and their comments on the corpse’s stature had been rather explicit.
"They do that sometimes, you know," chatted the dead woman. "The dead I mean. They twitch. Not in here usually, mind you. They are by far too busy being dead here." She chuckled. "But the fresh ones. They still feel things and it itches them. It can make them uncomfortable, especially when they want their peace. It’s like when you’re sleeping and someone’s continuously trying to poke you with a feather. You don’t really wake up. But it’s disturbing."
In Julia’s mind appeared the picture of herself sleeping on one of the tables, numerous blades cutting into her and she couldn’t wake up because she would be fast asleep. All those bothersome blades...
"Oh, I’m sorry. I know I talk too much, silly me. Must be boring as hell for you. But I’ve been alone for so long, only talking to myself, if you get my meaning, my words all tend to flee from me." She produced a slightly embarrassed laugh.
"You’ve been... talking to yourself?" Julia’s gaze wandered through the room. "While you were here?"
"Hm? Oh no, I meant before that. The last few years. You can get very lonely when you get old, my dear. The years stretch and are yet so short."
Julia didn’t know what to say. She hated herself for assuming automatically that when the old lady referred to her life she would mean her existence as a corpse.
"Oh."
"Yes. It was all very unfortunate."
"I’m sorry..."
"Don’t be, my dear. Couldn’t be helped."
At that point Julia made her one and only attempt at comforting a corpse.
"Maybe he’s at least happy where he is now. Your husband, I mean."
The corpse didn’t even look at her.
"I sincerely doubt it."
Julia always used to complain that during her medical studies she’d worked with more corpses than living people and that she wanted to feel an emotional connection to her patients. Right now she was prepared to revise everything she had said.
"And don’t believe all that nonsense about rigor mortis and such," the corpse continued. "In truth it’s this other thing. Hrm. Whossname. Thing. Myo... myoclone..."
"Myoclonies?"
"Yes, that’s it! It’s all myoclonies. Like when you slip and fall in your dreams and it makes your leg twitch in your sleep. Who said that the dead can’t have those, too? I tell you."
"Well, maybe because no one assumed that the dead could dream," suggested Julia.
The corpse nodded, sighed. "And who can blame them. I wouldn’t have believed it either I guess. Although I used to believe in a lot of things then. And a lot of people," she added.
"So... does that mean that the dead can dream?"
Although it was impossible to look into the dead’s eyes, it seemed that the woman’s thoughts trailed off for a moment.
"Sometimes."
"Do you?"
"No." She took another sip then held the cup in front of her. Julia looked at it.
"Would you be so kind, dear?"
"Oh. Sorry."
She poured the woman another cup. The tea was still steaming. Maybe the warmth felt good on the cold flesh, the girl mused.
"So, what happens when you die?" she asked.
"You leave."
Julia waited. After a while she understood that there would be no further additions to this simple statement.
"That’s it? You leave? Just like that?"
"Just like that."
"But isn’t there supposed to be light and a tunnel and feelings of happiness and all these things?"
The corpse shook her head. "I don’t know anything about that. As far as I’m informed you just leave."
Julia wasn’t sure if she wanted to know at all.
"Where?"
"Nowhere. You just leave. Nothing more. You stop."
The medical student in her had to think about this for a while. As atheistic as she was, that was still not the answer she had anticipated.
"Does that mean that there is no afterlife?"
"Not as far as I know, no. You stay in your dead body for a while. Then you leave." The corpse took another quick sip of tea. And flinched as if it was too hot.
It took Julia a while to realise what was seriously wrong with that whole theory. But when she did she was just too curious to be polite about it.
"So why didn’t you?"
The corpse looked at her and Julia instinctively recoiled. Even to herself this question had sounded too much like an accusation. She didn’t want to find out what an insulted corpse was capable of.
The dead woman smiled. It was as warm a smile as dead lips could manage.
"I didn’t because I was smart enough to take precautions. Before I died I made sure that I made an insurance about my death. You know, like a life insurance. Only for the time afterwards. I made sure that I would have an afterlife so to speak."
"A death insurance?"
"Precisely. I had a life insurance as well but there was really no need for it, since my husband had passed away and I was without any children. I decided to do something useful with the money, something for me. Finally. Everything I had ever done, had been for others, my whole life, never for me. Now there was something I’d do only for myself. Just for me."
Julia was unable to repress her thought. "You mean you paid for this?" She looked at the yellow body, the wrinkled partially removed skin, the monsters that were once eyes. And the formalin. It was everywhere, all the time. The corpse would dry out and decay without it.
"You paid money for being in this state?"
"Of course, dear. Why wouldn’t I?"
"But it’s... it’s not..."
"No, it isn’t," said the corpse. "But it’s better than nothing. And that’s what would have awaited me. Nothing. Nothing at all. I would have been just gone, with no one remembering me. You think I exaggerate? Let me assure you that I don’t. My husband died many years before me. My only child died at birth, leaving me infertile. There is no one else. Nobody to remember me when I’m gone. It’s not only that I would cease to exist, it would be like I had never existed at all. As if my whole life had been no more than a useless joke, forgotten as soon as it is told. I would have endured 87 years of living only to have nothing at all in the end. All those terrible things that happened, the things I did, that everyone does, the pain and the loss. What for? For oblivion? No. I couldn’t let that happen. Now I at least have death. The others don’t even have that."
It continued sipping. Slowly, it was in no hurry. The girl just kept staring at the dead thing before her. In the course of one night she had lost all interest in death.
"But you don’t long for... some kind of peace? Closure?"
The corpse put down the half-filled cup. It was not a nice kind of movement.
"You are a very foolish girl," it said. "And you haven’t listened to a single word I said. There is no peace, understood? Nothing is not peace, it is just nothing. You won’t be there to feel peace. You don’t get the chance. And you certainly won’t get the chance to feel closure either. The only time you could feel that is while you’re still alive. Or when you’ve taken the necessary precautions."
Why did the last three words sound like a threat.
"Aren’t you afraid? What are you going to do with... this?"
"I don’t know yet. But I have more than enough time to think about it and come up with a good idea."
But Julia was afraid. Afraid that what this sick dead thing in front of her said made some kind of sense. She didn’t want it to make sense. She didn’t want to hear it at all. Inside her head the formalin burned patiently.
"You will see," said the corpse. "When you are able to see the end of your existence, when you become aware that every heartbeat you hear could very well be your last... and you reflect back on your senseless life and realised that everything you did, everything you worked and bled for doesn’t mean a bloody thing in the end... then you will reconsider things. And you will ask for something, anything in return for the many years you spent and wasted. But all you get is nothing. Very literally nothing."
"I don’t believe you."
"No? Doesn’t matter. I didn’t either at your age. I was believing in a lot of other things instead. God, heaven, destiny, love. Foolish things. Not your fault that you’re foolish. You will learn. You will understand soon enough."
The corpse smiled. "Don’t you worry."
The words reflected themselves continuously, not filling the silence but accentuating it. Julia knew though that it wasn’t this room that kept them alive but the walls in her mind. They went on and on. Undead. Drenched in formalin. And finally forced her to make a decision.
"What do I have to do?" she asked.
The copse still smiled. It was expecting that question.
"Well, it’s very easy really. There is a small footnote at the end of the form. You contact the institute about it. They will assist you."
"You mean the university knows of this?"
"Of course. It was their idea I think."
Julia nodded to herself silently.
"But please go on. You were saying?"
"That would be the most important part. It’s not exactly cheap I’m afraid. But since you’re so very young... they might even go down with the price a little I heard. Or you can arrange something on a monthly basis, I’m sure."
"Yes, but what... what happens then?" Julia could hear her heart beat away the moments to the end. "What do they do? How does it work?" She thought for a moment. "Do you have to give them your soul?"
"Oh no silly, it’s not about the soul at all. It’s about the heart."
As the corpse took its last sip of tea, Julia’s eyes found the dead heart that lay on the cold steel table. They had to hand it in tomorrow. As part of their exam.
"My tea is cold," complained the corpse as Julia quietly finished her prayer.
+++
The old wooden doors opened before Julia, the stench of formalin assaulting the fresh morning air. In the same instant her mind was hit by a rain of busy noise. Hundreds of students in white coats were roaming about, chatting, running into each other, doing their work. All the shrouds had been lifted. All the hidden things revealed. And all that was found beneath the yellow skin was the clear texture of formalin.
On the way to her dissecting table she was greeted a few times and greeted back almost as often. Her brothers and sisters in death were already cutting and joking happily, the macabre never leaving their voices. At the moment five of them were present. Julia nodded at them.
"Morning."
"Morning, doctor. Patient’s ready."
Julia looked at the corpse. It hadn’t changed overnight. The same agonised face, the bald head sticking to the emaciated chest at an unnatural angle. The skin yellow and wrinkled and glistening from the preserving fluid it had been lying in for the greater part of the night.
"We went through the organs while you were gone. It seems like she had an ulcer in her stomach. Big one. Probably wasn’t able to eat much in the last years."
Julia looked at its face.
"Also most of her uterus had apparently been resected at an early age. A complicated miscarriage maybe."
Julia’s expression froze, her mind heavy with thought.
"Are you ok?"
"Yes," she replied, unmoved.
"Good. You’ll have to take care of her face today."
"What about it?"
"Take it off."
In no hurry Julia put on her gloves and picked up her scalpel. Her other hand rested on the corpse’s cheek bone.
"Are you ok with that?"
"Yes."
Carefully she sliced into the skin beside the broken eye, slowly tracing around it. Her eyes watched attentively, expecting something like a twitch. But the body was still.
"Damn, look at this!"
Julia didn’t look. She knew what was there to see.
On of them held the crippled and sliced heart in his hand. It was small enough to fit into a fist. Shrunken and dry. Devoid of all preservation. Like there was no formalin left in it.
"Look at it! Oh, we’re so dead. It is completely ruined. Useless..."
Dead, thought Julia. Just dead.
"It must have dried over night. We forgot to moisten it in formalin."
The scalpel slid effortlessly into the face. It was quiet in Julia’s mind.
"That’s it. It’s over. We’re done."
The blade retreated. Julia cocked her head and regarded the cut. Then she began to pull of the skin.
The End.
